Ports of Call
by teawithmilk
Summary: [2012-verse; post-The Kraang Conspiracy] There are many things April still doesn't know about herself, and only three places she can find the answers.


deals with a lot of stuff that happened in The Kraang Conspiracy, so, spoilers for that episode!

huge, huge thanks to my lovely betas theherocomplex, pandasize and snuffes.

turtles = nickelodeon.

* * *

**ports of call**

* * *

April's first port of call was home.

Her aunt worked shifts, and half of the time came home long after April was asleep. So it was a school night, April thought. So what? She had research to do. So she waited, curled up on the couch with a big mug of chai and her laptop, until her aunt slipped through the door.

"She went missing for a few days," her aunt said eventually, her lips pressed together tightly and her fingers curled around her coffee mug. "Kirby… well, we were all worried, sweetie, but then they found her out in Brooklyn and once the hospital had checked her out she was free to go. They just put it down to her having you."

"And she never said where she was?" April asked.

"Not to me. Maybe to your dad, but… but April, honey, it's late. What's this about?"

"Oh, I just wanted to know."

"He'll come back," her aunt said, ruffling April's hair tiredly, and April hadn't had the emotional energy to say _no, he won't, because he's currently chewing rats and terrifying tourists_.

"There's pasta in the fridge," April said instead, pulling her computer back into her lap and tapping out a message. "I left you a plate."

"Who are you talking to?" her aunt asked interestedly.

"A friend."

Her messenger window was filled up with IMs from Donnie, talking about DNA sequencing, and helixes, and how he was kicking himself for not picking up on this earlier, back when the Genome Project was a thing. Half of the time, when Donnie got into this kind of a mood, he didn't even need a reply, it was mostly just him 'thinking aloud', and his ramblings filled the space she didn't want, or know how, to fill.

**April**: sorry, my aunt just came home

**Donatello**: not that I actually think it would be a good idea to cut you open and compare internal organs but it'd be interesting to see if there was something else about you that wasn't just your brain, y'know?  
because if that's the case  
oh that's okay!  
_Donatello is typing…_

She interrupted him with a link to Google Maps, then rubbed her thumb against the gently-thrumming migraine.

**April**: can you meet me here tomorrow ngiht? bring Leo.

* * *

She was elbow-deep in her fourth box when the soft footfall of ninjas dropped in behind her. Her second port of call had been the storage unit over in Chelsea, with all of the things from her dad's old apartment in dusty boxes, that they hadn't had time to sort through in the month between Kraang and—

"Where do you want us?" Leo asked, and April pointed him in the direction of a box of books and photo albums.

"Check in there. I'm looking for anything from when I was born, and before."

"Because of Kurzman?"

"Yeah."

"Your aunt doesn't have anything like that home?" Donnie asked, already reaching for the top-most boxes and pulling it down, while Leo went for the photo albums.

April shook her head. "She has my birth certificate, and my dad's social-security stuff, but everything about my mom should be in here." She turned back to her own box - this one was full of paperwork, mostly - old medical bills, like the ones from when she'd broken her arm in fifth grade, mixed in with monthly statements, none of it in any real order, because that had always been her mom's thing.

_Dad's the mad scientist, remember?_ she had been told once, and her mom had made the crazy-hair gesture.

She took a deep breath through her nose, and then let it out slowly; the old wrench in her chest was twice as raw, because the loss was doubled. Another breath, then she bit the inside of her lip and kept digging. She felt a soft wave of quiet concern at her back, but neither Donnie nor Leo asked, and she was grateful for that. When she reached the bottom of that box, she turned to the next - here, things were newer, her dad's old access card (the first one he'd permitted after he'd finally given up on the hair ever coming back), her school report cards, a stuffed envelope with funeral invoices.

"Huh," she said sharply, to herself, to fill the silence. "Dead people are expensive."

Leo leaned over and squeezed her shoulder once.

She shoved the papers back into the envelope, and then back into the box.

Behind her, Leo flipped through another photo album, then cleared his throat. "Uh, why are there a bunch of pictures of you dressed like a princess?"

"Wait, there are? Let me see!" Donnie turned eagerly, reaching for the photo-album, but April swiped it before he got a chance.

"I was seven, and my grandma insisted."

"Like Shichi-Go-San?" Leo asked, and April shrugged, smoothing her thumbs over the picture of her with no front teeth and her hands pressed together in front of her. Grandma O'Neil stood behind her, looking every inch the Irish grandma.

"I guess. Whatever, it's not important. Just a holiday. I had a party. Can you give me that box?" she asked, and Donnie jumped to his feet, grabbing at an old microwave box. It made a rattle as he set it on the floor, and April leaned over it, digging through old frames and books until she pulled out her mom's oversized handbag.

Her heart clenched.

It was a big, brown thing, scuffed along the sides and the leather peeling on the handles, but it was soft under her hands, and April pulled it close.

It smelled of dust, instead of the peppermint gum her mom had always chewed, and it creased with all of the things that had been in there on the last day that her dad hadn't been able to take out. Mostly, it was the little things - her mom's old wallet with her driver's license, the _My Mommy Is Beautiful_ card, her wedding picture, April's first baby picture, and a picture from back when the Yankees had brought the title home.

There had been hundreds of events that had warranted pictures, but they were always posed - _smile for the camera!_. This one, April couldn't remember how, but somebody else had been taking the photograph for them just as the bus had rolled past, shaking them out of their happy-family pose. April wore an Uncle Sam hat and a Yankees shirt, hauled up on her dad's shoulders with one hand fisted in his hair and her fist raised high. She was yelling at the parade while her mom stood next to them, her hands full of a World Series flag, April's jacket and the same bag. Her sandy hair was pulled back into a ponytail, pulled through the gap at the back of her baseball cap, and her eyes were creased in the same smile April had seen after school every day when she came home.

"Wow, she was really pretty," Donnie said gently, both he and Leo peering over her shoulder, and April choked down the lump in her throat until all that came up was a thin, watery smile.

"Yeah."

Then she forced it down.

"And if I find out that the Kraang had anything to do with that, too, then—"

Leo winced, but wisely didn't argue.

"I found something," Donnie said, a few minutes later, and held up a beaten leather journal.

* * *

**From: Leo  
**Donnie and Mikey spoke to sensei.

He said you can join sparring with us but only if you promise to tap out.

**To: Leo  
**great! I can't come by tonight, though - have plans. tomorrow?

* * *

The old futon factory hadn't been used by the Purple Dragons since the last time the building got smashed in, and it was on the way to the subway, so April walked Casey to the station after studying, and then kept going. She might have been a terrible ninja when it came to fighting, and when it came to running three times to Harlem and back, but breaking into a disused building was something she could do.

Besides, she'd done it before, once every week ever since it had happened. The guy who owned the street cart was starting to remember her, and April wished that she could find something nice about it, except _mouldy peach girl_ wasn't exactly a flattering nickname.

Inside, it was dark - the power had been cut a long time ago, and anyway, she thought darkly. It wasn't like the current resident really needed the light.

The third port of call.

"Hey, Dad…" she said, raising a hand awkwardly to the the great hulking shadow in the corner. It lifted its head, sniffed the air, and hauled itself closer, surprisingly quiet for a three-hundred pound manbat. "I need to ask you something. Did you know?"

Kirby stared back, big wet bat-nose quivering. April swallowed, then stepped closer. The floorboards creaked underfoot.

"Did you know that the Kraang took Mom?"

He didn't reply, instead nudged his head in the direction of the bag of old fruit she had in her left hand. She pulled it back.

"Did you _know_? Dad, quit it, I'm not giving you this until you tell me— until—" The lump was back in her throat; she forced it down, and it burned. "Until you tell me what happened."

She pulled out the folded newspaper article from the journal that Donnie had found:_MISSING WOMAN FOUND IN GREENPOINT, _and hated the blank look she got in reply.

"What _happened_?" April demanded again. "You have to know something! Why didn't you tell me this when you came back? Or before the stupid Kraang even showed up, when you_knew_? _Why didn't you stop them_?"

Wings fluttered and April found herself in a dome of softly-glowing leather, a big winged hand gently patting her head. She gasped, angrily scrubbing her face with the heel of her hand, and when she looked up, he grinned a big, toothy smile - the big, goofy, inhuman smile that _wasn't her dad's_, took the bag of fruit off of her with his twisted mutant hands, and scuttled back to the shadows.

And she just felt cold.

Cold, and desperate.

_The one called April O'Neil will soon expire_, the Kraang had said, two days ago, and then_something had happened to her. _But when she closed her eyes, listened, tried to make her own head burn, all it did was ache, a migraine hitting her in the top of her skull like an ice-pick.

Either it wasn't working, or whatever was left of her dad was enjoying the finer points to being comatose, and so there was nothing to work _with_.

What was the point of being _psychic_, she wanted to know, of being able to wreck Kraang and listen in to magical alien secrets, if she couldn't even use it for mind-reading the people she _wanted_ to read? If it only worked when she was about to have her face drilled out?

_You're supposed to be here_, she thought, at the bat with its face in a plastic bag. _You're my dad. You're supposed to _be here_._

"Okay," she said instead, swallowing, and took a step backwards, and then another.

* * *

Once, April had called them all her brothers, and part of her still meant it.

But part of her also wanted to pull Mikey's teeth out, one by one, if he called her his _sister-in-Kraang_ one more time.

"You okay?" Raph asked, when she threw herself onto the couch next to him, the fourth port of call.

She held up a hand, palm-down, and waggled it side-to-side. "Ehhh."

"Find anything?"

"Found that I don't wanna talk about it," she said, scowling straight ahead at the TV.

Raph huffed, venomless and warm. "Works for me. Show's on," he said instead, settling back into his cushion and shoving her his unopened soda can, which she didn't drink.

"This sucks," April said, eventually, heavily, her fingers wrapped around the can tightly, so that beads of condensation bled through her fingers.

Raphael leaned over, nudging her arm with a gentle fist. "Yeah. I know."

* * *

—end—


End file.
